From Catholic News Service’s Cindy Wooden:
In an unusual video message, recorded on an iPhone by a Pentecostal pastor Pope Francis knew in Argentina, the pope says all Christians share blame for their divisions, speaks of his “longing” for their unity and insists that God will bring the miracle of Christian unity to completion.
“Pray to the Lord that he will unite us all,” the pope tells a group of Pentecostals meeting in the United States. “Let’s move forward, we are brothers; let us give each other that spiritual embrace and allow the Lord to complete the work he has begun. Because this is a miracle; the miracle of unity has begun.” …
Addressing Palmer as “my brother, a bishop-brother” and saying they had “been friends for years,” the pope offered what he said were greetings “both joyful and full of longing” to participants in a forthcoming meeting of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries, a Pentecostal group that sponsors large prayer gatherings around the world.
The joy, the pope said, comes from knowing that “the Lord is working all over the whole world.”
But he said he is full of longing because Christians are still separated, “separated because of sin, our sins.”
“Who is at fault?” he asked. “All of us are, we are all sinners. There is only one who is just and that is the Lord.”
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